Steinbrueck's viaduct efforts remind many of his father

Updated 10:00 pm, Friday, March 2, 2007

Councilman Peter Steinbrueck relishes being compared to his father, who fought to save Pike Place Market.

Councilman Peter Steinbrueck relishes being compared to his father, who fought to save Pike Place Market.

Photo: Gilbert W. Arias/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Activist doesn't fall far from the tree

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All in all, Peter Steinbrueck decided he'd rather fight than run.

This comes as no surprise for locals familiar with the Seattle councilman's style. Or even those familiar with his father, the late Victor Steinbrueck, savior of the Pike Place Market and historical preservation warrior.

When Steinbrueck, a councilman for 10 years, announced this week that he won't seek re-election so he can wage an activist's uphill battle for a viaduct plan not even on the radar, one collective response was this:

Like father, like son.

This wasn't always meant as flattery.

"I have no choice," said Steinbrueck, 49. "I have tried to fight it from the inside. I have tried every approach. Political leadership has failed. This is the one thing I cannot turn my back on."

As Steinbrueck steps away from City Hall and moves toward what he considers Seattle's necessary future -- a surface boulevard to replace the viaduct -- he also is looking backward. His dad's epic fight for the Market was as much about preserving a way of life as it was about the buildings.

The younger Steinbrueck sees the viaduct's possible death as his shot at a similar legacy, a chance at the larger ambition of improving the quality of life in his city.

But an open question remains: Are Peter's ambitions for the city or himself?

Steinbrueck insists his effort to raze the viaduct isn't a strategic plan leading to higher political roles -- the mayor's office, county executive or Congress, although he admits he might someday consider any of those.

"It is a mistake to even think along those lines. As soon as you talk about running for mayor, running for Congress, you become threatening. That is a mistake. It confuses his mission right now of killing the viaduct," she said.

However, she conceded Steinbrueck is genuinely sincere about the waterfront.

"His No. 1 issue, bar none, is to stop the rebuild of the viaduct," Drago said. "I think he will be a strong advocate and clearly has a family history along those lines."

Father scorned, revered

There's no doubt Steinbrueck is feeling the pull of his past, when he fought against private encroachment on public parks and worked for a cap on downtown building heights in 1989.

In fact, the younger Steinbrueck's political career began when he was a child. His father, an architecture professor at the University of Washington, brought politics into the house. Literally.

Socialists. Progressives. Miscellaneous activists. Poets and writers. Unavoidable in this climate, arguments were encouraged during the 1960s, serving as a vivid backdrop with the budding civil rights movement, environmental awareness, anti-war protests and the assassinations of a president, his brother and a generation's most important human rights leader.

"I was exposed to all of these things," he said. "It had an effect."

The effect coalesced in his father's famous fight: saving the Market. In the late-1960s, city leaders had pushed ahead with plans to change a four-block swath of land into a 50-story hotel and parking garage.

At every turn they found Victor Steinbrueck in the way. Picketing. Writing letters. Making noise. (Among city officials' printable Steinbrueck descriptions include a "burr" in the saddle of local politicians and a "barnacle" on the town's hide.)

Often next to the elder Steinbrueck was young son Peter, one of his four children with first wife Elaine Pearl Worden.

"Peter was down (at the Market) there a bunch," said older sister Lisa Steinbrueck, 52. "More than the rest of us. I was a teenager then and, teenagers have different priorities. Peter was younger and he loved being with his dad."

Eventually, Victor Steinbrueck won, convincing voters to approve a 1971 initiative that preserved the farmers market, which celebrates its centennial this year. Today it ranks as one of the most popular tourist destinations in the West.

While Peter Steinbrueck remembers the victory, he also recalls the cost -- not just from the Market fight but also successful efforts to get Pioneer Square on the National Register of Historic Places and an ultimately losing effort to incorporate a town square in Westlake Center.

"He was scorned," Steinbrueck said of his father. "He was not well-liked. I saw the bitter ridicule and hostile treatment."

But in the end, "He was proved right. I remember that, too."

Family was close

Alone among his siblings, Peter Steinbrueck attended exclusive Lakeside School on a scholarship and then Bowdoin College in Maine, a tiny liberal arts school consistently ranked among the nation's best and most exclusive.

"That was a big change," Lisa Steinbrueck said. "Who he associated with was formed from that."

When he returned from school, the family remained close, shared a regular Monday night dinner at dad's. (Years earlier, Victor Steinbrueck divorced Worden and married Marjorie Nelson, an actress.) The dinner table served as an open forum, Lisa Steinbrueck said. Everyone came prepared to debate.

Peter Steinbrueck followed his father's footsteps both into architecture and the self-confident belief that he knew what was right for his hometown. Political activists, enamored with the elder Steinbrueck's noisy and successful time as historical preservationist (he died in 1985 at 73), encouraged the younger Steinbrueck to run for mayor in 1997.

Instead, he ran for John Manning's vacated council seat. He took office in November 1997.

But like his dad, Steinbrueck's manner didn't always win him friends. Some who have worked with him said he inherited both his father's occasional arrogance and lack of interest in compromise, at least in his earlier years.

More recently, colleagues say, he has "learned how to count," how to bring around support and consensus for his issues, and how to recognize when it is time to compromise.

Steinbrueck relishes the comparisons to his father but bristles when opponents upset by a particular vote say "your father never would have done that; you should be ashamed." Steinbrueck said his dad had a fundamental objection to freeways and probably would support his son's latest effort.

"I have vowed to never betray my conscience," Peter Steinbrueck said. "I'm not worried about compromise, I want to build consensus."

Political maneuvering?

Longtime Seattle activist John Fox said he once invoked Steinbrueck's father in frustration over a council vote.

"I told him 'your father would not be doing this' -- it so upset him," said Fox, who worked on some issues with the elder Steinbrueck.

"We have had our arguments from time to time, but I have extremely high regard for Peter," he said. "We have had issues where we fought, but I consider him a friend.

"If he believes strongly in something, off he goes and there isn't much you can do to deter him," Fox said. "If you are in sync with him, you have a great advocate. If you aren't, it can be awfully frustrating."

Attorney Phil Talmadge, who has watched Steinbrueck for years, said he's baffled by his latest move.

"It's my sense that if he was seriously interested in the surface street alternative, he would pursue it more aggressively on the council, or with the mayor. It seems odd that he is leaving.

"He is something of an elitist, he believes he knows better than the average folks of Seattle what is best for them," Talmadge said. "In this scenario, I don't think he has discussed with 100,000 people from West Seattle who drive over the bridge now, where they are going to go."

Talmadge said he suspects Steinbrueck's announcement is about more than the viaduct fight. "This is his way of cornering a constituency that will help him in running for mayor in 2009," he said.

Arne Bystrom, an architect who received awards for renovations in the Market, has known both father and son. "I have truly wondered about him feeling in the shadow of his father," Bystrom said. "I truly believe that the viaduct issue is the biggest thing since the Market fight. I can certainly see the parallel there.

"I am totally in agreement with his feeling about the viaduct. The discussion should be about how to get rid of it; there should never have been an issue about how to keep it."

In his office Friday morning, preparing to give schoolchildren a tour of City Hall, Steinbrueck admitted the jump is a risk.

He knows he's sacrificing his vote on the issues that matter to him. But he'll gain something he's lacked for a while: Political freedom.